Martin Brundle shares Max Verstappen conspiracy theory over huge pace gap to McLaren

Martin Brundle does not believe that Max Verstappen was truly 23 seconds slower than Lando Norris at the Dutch GP. He feels a message was being sent to Red Bull instead.

After Norris uncorked a stellar lap to take pole at Zandvoort – over three-tenths up on Verstappen – it appeared as though the fightback was on as Verstappen snatched the lead from Norris at the Dutch Grand Prix race start.

Did Max Verstappen slow to give Red Bull the ‘hurry up’?

Norris would recover from his poor start to latch onto the back of Verstappen’s Red Bull, making the overtake on Lap 18 and never looking back from there as he went on to win by just short of 23 seconds, the largest victory margin so far in F1 2024.

It left Red Bull team principal Christian Horner claiming lessons had been learned as Red Bull now set about trying to understand how they can whittle away such a “deficit”.

“We need to understand where the deficit is,” he told Sky F1 .

“I think we’ve learned quite a lot this weekend, but you can see the pace that they had at this track was outstanding.

“So, you know, we need to obviously understand how we can improve performance on our.”

However, Sky F1 pundit Brundle does not believe that Verstappen was truly 23 seconds slower than Norris across the Dutch GP race distance.

Instead, with McLaren having shone in the F1 2024 development war while Red Bull’s dominance has vanished, Brundle believes that Verstappen eased off to send a “hurry up” to the Red Bull factory to turn the tide.

Asked what those learning mentioned by Horner will be, Brundle replied: “I’m going to guess about car setup and strategies and all the normal things about going racing.

“I would hazard a guess that that was not as fast as Max could go.

“He knew he couldn’t beat Lando and dropping back a bit like that, it’s going to give the factory a hurry up, isn’t it? I’d be pretty sure of that.”

Key F1 2024 stats following the Dutch Grand Prix

👉 Top 10: The drivers with the highest win percentages in F1 history

👉 F1 2024: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates

Fellow Sky F1 pundit Naomi Schiff urged Red Bull to get on top of the RB20’s struggles, arguing that a more disrupted race weekend – like it was at Zandvoort with rain-impacted practice sessions, while a chunk of FP3 was lost after Logan Sargeant’s fiery crash – makes it tougher for Red Bull to find that sweet spot.

“They have a car at the moment that isn’t just smooth sailing, as it has been in the past,” said Schiff.

“And they have to get on top of that, because when a weekend like this comes along and you have curtailed sessions, or rainy sessions, as Martin says, it’s tougher for them to get the setup in the sweet spot, and then they lose out, and they lost out quite a lot when it comes to pace.”

Norris’ triumph marks the first time that Verstappen has not won the Dutch Grand Prix since its 2021 return to the F1 calendar.

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